Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
by ameister14 on Saturday January 23, 2021 @06:43PM
(#25887245)
>Time theft is a bummer, especially on the team-level where you just want to get things done.
I've dealt with this in execs and team leaders before - why do you care about time theft? If it's about the productivity loss, that should be measurable in its own right.
Most of the time, I find that people just want to be able to see the team working for them and don't like the idea of paying people 'not to work' despite the fact that what they're really paying for are outputs.
Re:Why Working from Home Will Stick [pdf]
by news_to_me on Saturday January 23, 2021 @07:36PM
(#25887591)
Totally agree — I was trying to frame my comment in the terms of the GP. For better or worse, managers are often forced to think in terms of time rather than output, and I wanted to respond on that level.
For jobs where time spent correlates with output, time is a good way to think about it (and should be paid hourly), but obviously this isn't 99% of white collar jobs.
Maybe you wanted to say "certain people"? Working from home is definitely more difficult for some people's work style than others, plus a ton of other factors like how well one's home is suited to working in, how much skill a person has working in that environment, etc.
Time theft is a bummer, especially on the team-level where you just want to get things done. I wonder what causes it? Off the top of my head I can think of:
- People are naturally lazy (I really disagree with this, but it feels like the default "robber baron" answer)
- People are having trouble adjusting to different and various work environments (probably a good amount of this)
- The nature of how we work in America is fundamentally unnatural for many people, and the lack of supervision allows people to assume a better work/life balance
#3 is maybe just my experience in the workplace, but it feels pretty true — I wonder how widespread that experience is.
In any case, I'm glad the pandemic forced many people to reevaluate what "going to work" looks like, and hopefully we settle on something closer to how we'd each like to work.